How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

This ever-expanding rubric of pseudo-rights comes at the expense of actual rights. For example, doctors have a negative right to control their own labor—no one can force a doctor to provide service. But if we all have a positive right to health care, someone’s negative rights will be violated: either the doctor, who will be forced to alienate his labor without his consent, or the taxpayer, who will see his own labor confiscated to pay for the doctor, or other patients, who will be deprived of their ability to obtain health care in favor of others. Similarly, landowners have a right to build and rent apartments. But if we all have a positive right to housing, someone’s negative rights will again be violated: either the landlord, who will be forced to rent out his apartment against his consent, or the developer, who will be forced to build more units, or the taxpayer, who will be forced to subsidize the landlord or the developer or the renter. How, in the absence of government compulsion, are these rights to be realized? Just because South Africa’s constitution promises housing, food, water, and social security doesn’t mean that South Africans actually receive these goods and services.